The Annual State of the Cloud
Cloud Computing is rapidly changing the way that large organisations procure and implement IT Solutions to meet the requirements of their customers. With the rapid growth in Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud adoption by companies of all sizes across all sectors is well documented by specialist organisations like RightScale in their Annual State of the Cloud report.
The Cloud has become so pervasive that its relevance and impact is now recognised in areas that would previously have been considered “Cloud Free”. Mainframes are a great example of this with Syncsort’s State of the Mainframe for 2018 reporting that 31.5% of mainframe users have invested in additional capacity because of the Cloud.
Are Mainframe Services Impacted?
That same report also confirms 16.9% of mainframe users have already, or plan to, integrate the mainframe with Public Cloud systems, with the figure for Private Cloud being 25%. Cloud Computing is clearly having an impact on the demand for mainframe services and the way that those services are accessed and consumed.
For customers looking to the future and open to some “Blue Sky Thinking” a proven option to more tightly couple COBOL and PL/I applications with Cloud based systems is a rehost using Enterprise Server. This approach, using Micro Focus’ mainframe compatible online and batch application capabilities, enables mainframe applications to run as native Cloud applications with minimal change enabling easier integration with Cloud based systems.
Case in point
AKDB are a great example of the tighter integration that can be achieved by rehosting a mainframe application to a Cloud ready platform. Using Enterprise Server for .NET to redeploy the COBOL programs to Windows using the .NET framework and integrating them into a new user front end developed in C#. By integrating COBOL and C# they can deliver the same high quality service and improve accessibility for their users. I wrote a blog about that particular case study a little while ago, feel free to find out more by following this link.
If you would like to know more about how Micro Focus can help you Cloud Enable your mainframe applications and are ready for some “Blue Sky Thinking”, then check out the recording of our joint webinar with Microsoft.
As you no doubt know, Microsoft Azure is a secure cloud platform that can meet your scalability, reliability, resilience and performance goals. Whilst moving IBM mainframe workloads to Azure can be a challenge, it’s also usually very possible and very beneficial for a number of reasons we will discuss.
As well as the recorded webinar there are a variety of other online resources showcasing our expertise in how to approach, plan and succeed when moving IBM Mainframe workloads to Azure. Make sure you check them out if this topic interests you…..
